Documentary Criticized For Re-enacted Scenes

By IRENE LACHER

Published: March 29, 2005

With filmmakers creating a tempest over the undisclosed use of re-enactments in this year's Oscar-winning documentary short, ''Mighty Times: The Children's March,'' the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has initiated a review of its eligibility rules for documentaries.

Although re-enactments are a staple of documentary filmmaking and explicitly allowed by the academy, some documentary filmmakers are questioning the ethics of Bobby Houston and Robert Hudson's unflagged use of a technique Mr. Houston and Mr. Hudson call ''faux doc'' in portraying the 1963 civil rights protest by thousands of children in Birmingham, Ala. The filmmakers, based in Ojai, Calif., recreated scenes using vintage cameras and distressed film stock to shoot more than 700 extras, trained dogs and period automobiles and fire engines on various locations in Southern California.

Mr. Houston, who directed the film, and Mr. Hudson, who produced it, said only 10 percent of the 40-minute documentary consisted of such re-enactments. But Jon Else, the cinematographer and producer of ''Eyes on the Prize,'' the 1987 television mini-series about the civil rights movement, reviewed the film at the academy's request and estimated that at least half of ''The Children's March'' was recreated.

Bruce Davis, the academy's executive director, said officials scrutinized the film after complaints began rolling in this month. ''I'm sure there were sequences that were difficult to distinguish,'' he said.

Mr. Houston and Mr. Hudson said that was precisely their intent: that the different scenes would mesh seamlessly. ''That's my quote: 'Thank you,''' Mr. Houston said. ''The way we make our films is like baking a biscotti. We make a classic documentary using the archival record. We then make another layer of film. We bake the cookie twice, like a biscotti. That second layer of film fills in the gaps, and what you end up with is a seamless telling and definitive telling of unknown chapters from civil rights history.''

Documentary filmmakers interviewed agreed that ''The Children's March'' was a beautifully made film with a stirring soundtrack and emotional resonance. But Frieda Lee Mock, the executive committee chairwoman of the academy's documentary branch, pointed out that Mr. Houston and Mr. Hudson's failure to disclose their use of re-enactments called into question the nature of reality implied by the use of the term documentary.

''Can people believe what they see visually?'' asked Ms. Mock, who won the 1994 best documentary feature Oscar for ''Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision.'' ''Ultimately, it's an issue of credibility. And the question is, why wasn't it disclosed to us, the academy members voting?''

Mr. Houston and Mr. Hudson flagged re-enactments in ''The Legacy of Rosa Parks,'' the first film in the ''Mighty Times'' series, which was commissioned by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a teaching tool for students in middle school and high school. ''Legacy '' opens with a disclaimer and re-enacted scenes are indicated with film borders edged with sprocket holes.

That film was nominated for an Oscar in 2002 but failed to win, prompting some filmmakers to complain that they felt deliberately misled when elements indicating re-enacted scenes were not included in ''The Children's March.''

In a March 18 letter to Mr. Davis, the New Jersey-based documentary filmmaker Steve Kalafer called the lack of disclosure ''an intentional deception.'' He added, ''In comparing the two films, it is clear that they chose to realize the full potential of their 'faux doc' technique, raising it to a new level as a well-crafted, cunningly deceitful art form -- but not documentary filmmaking.''

Mr. Kalafer, who produced ''Sister Rose's Passion,'' also nominated in the short-documentary Oscar category, said that he pressed the complaint after the awards were announced because momentum was building among filmmakers and doing so beforehand would have appeared ''calculated and unseemly.''

Mr. Houston denied that the filmmakers misled the academy to increase their Oscar odds. ''If their only pursuit is to say we were deceptive with the academy, it's absolutely untrue,'' he said. ''The people that vote on our films are our peers, and these people have seen re-enactments for 20 years plus.''

Mr. Houston and Mr. Hudson said they submitted the second film without using sprocket holes or a disclaimer at the request of HBO, which helped finance it. '''Rosa Parks' has been playing on HBO for two years without film sprockets,'' Mr. Houston said. ''HBO does not prefer to have that. They asked us to deliver the film without it, the reason being that audiences do object. They find the sprockets distancing. The viewing public are not filmmakers, and the viewing public are not historians. What they need to know is that the film is truthful.''

An HBO spokeswoman denied that the channel had requested that the film be produced without a disclosure statement or sprocket holes. She said that when the channel shows ''The Children's March'' in June, it will include an HBO-mandated disclosure of the re-enactments.

The version distributed to schools by the Southern Poverty Law Center includes both a disclosure statement and the film sprocket holes.

''This is part of the historical record, and we want to make sure that people understand what footage was available and what footage was recreated,'' said J. Richard Cohen, the center's president.